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Populating PDF Forms

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Hello,

I've been searching for a way to use PHP to populate a PDF Form (created in Acrobat Pro). I just learned that PHP has a number of FDF functions:
http://us.php.net/manual/en/ref.fdf.php

Using these functions requires that PHP be compiled with Adobe's FDF toolkit:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/fdftoolkit.html

Any chance you could make a build of Scodigo that contains this FDF Toolkit (at least on the Mac)? If not, then do you know of another way to populate PDF Forms?

Regards,
Sean

P.S. As you know, we can simulate the population of PDF Forms by pasting an image of the PDF on a layout and then overlaying fields, but in my experience any printouts look crummy.

Found a Solution

grantwood's picture

Hello,

I did do some research, and over the past few months I've been working on a video series for FileMaker Magazine, and the video series was released this week:
http://www.filemakermagazine.com/videos/populating-pdf-forms.html

I ended up finding a Java solution, since I couldn't find a PHP library that could help me.

Regards,
Sean

Populating PDF Forms

Micah Woods's picture

Hello Sean,

I'll add this to our wish list and we'll see what we can do. I'm afraid it'll be a little while before we can get to this because we're busy working on the next release.

Is there any way that you could use the web viewer to display the PDF and allow the user to fill it in, save it, etc.?

We also have an example that uses cPdfWriter to create PDF files. It's not the same as filling out a pre-existing form but it may work (record #30). http://www.scodigo.com/downloads/smartpill/misc/Testbed_Oct_07.zip

Regards,
Micah

Thanks for the Update

grantwood's picture

Thanks for letting me know. I guess I'll continue my research.